


A Simply Disgusting Habit

by flitterflutterfly



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 23:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flitterflutterfly/pseuds/flitterflutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock didn’t understand the emotion of love. So, he did an experiment, and learned more than he wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Simply Disgusting Habit

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't have a happy ending. You have been warned.

Sherlock had decided never to fall in love again; it was a disgusting habit. Perhaps not as disgusting as heroin, he had not been fond of that. More so than the nicotine patches he took regularly, but regardless.

It had just been an experiment. That’s all it was, an experiment, like the countless others that ranged the flat they, him and his flatmate, shared together. On the dining table, in the fridge, coloring the walls and floors with chemicals and blood.

Just an experiment, one he thought he could clean up when he was done.

But he couldn’t clean this one up, couldn’t dump it in the trash or down the sink. It was stuck, imprinted on, dare he say it, heart.

And he didn’t know what to do about it.

That was an interesting thought in itself. He never admitted to not knowing something. He was a detective, a scientist, and a truth-seeker. He knew more than most, but not what most knew.

Love was a strong emotion, he had thought after a particularly brutal murder scene was presented before him. He solved it, of course he solved it, but it remained in his mind, nagging at the back of his thoughts. Not the first to do so, and it wouldn’t be the last. Still, it bothered him.

He’d asked his flatmate. John was a blessing, Sherlock would have thought had he believed in them, and often the man knew the things that Sherlock had deemed trash and deleted from his memory.

“Love, Sherlock?” John had sounded a bit incredulous, though Sherlock could hardly understand why.

“Yes,” Sherlock had said simply. “You’ve felt it, I assume. Approximately 99.256 % of humans have, so studies say.”

“What studies?” John had asked suspiciously, but he then had shaken his head before Sherlock could answer. “But, I have.”

“You have?” Sherlock titled his head to the side, studying the army veteran before him. “And?”

“And what?” John slumped down on his armchair. Sherlock wondered at that, his favoritism of the old thing. It was hardly the most comfortable piece of furniture in their living room.

“Don’t be daft, John,” Sherlock chided. “It doesn’t suit you.”

John chocked out a laugh. “It doesn’t?” he said in a breath, a weird smile coming over his face.

Sherlock catalogued it, sardonic, he supposed. Or perhaps bitter. Why bitterness?

“Of course not,” Sherlock said. “You are marginally more intelligent than the rest of the human race. Your brain will rot if you don’t use it.”

Not false, as it were. The neural connections didn’t just stay forever; they needed to be constantly refreshed. Sherlock feared the loss of them, that if he stopped thinking he would suddenly no longer be able to.

In sleep, he dreamed, the normal way to encode memories, but in dreams he was blank and he didn’t like that.

Sherlock got bored of the direction of his thoughts, so he changed it. “What does love feel like?” he asked for the second time that evening.

For a moment, exactly thirty-two seconds, John just stared at him. Then he laughed.

Sherlock reeled back in surprise. What had made him laugh? He searched through all his mental sources, but there was no explanation. He had not said a joke, neither were pumped up on adrenaline, as was the usual reason for their illogical humor, and no one was dead.

“John?” he said a bit hesitantly.

The man took a couple of shaking breaths and held up a hand. Sherlock waited for him to straighten properly, whipping a nonexistent tear from his eye.

“I’m sorry, Sherlock,” John said. “It’s just, you looked so annoyed. You honestly don’t know what love feels like?”

Sherlock knew he was pouting, but he couldn’t help it. This conversation was taking far longer than he had predicted. Even now, years after they had become flatmates, John still managed to surprise him. “No,” he said shortly.

John suddenly looked sad, a strange emotion on his face. Sherlock didn’t like it there, that emotion. Then he stopped that train of thought and examined it. Why should he care that John was sad?

“I’m sorry, Sherlock,” John said again, but Sherlock deemed it was for a different reason than the first.

Sherlock shook his head in exasperation. “Just tell me, John!”

John clasped his hands together, elbows on the chair’s arms. His weight was shifted slightly to the left; likely the old bullet wound in his shoulder was bothering him. Sherlock made a mental note to start the fire earlier tomorrow morning; the heat did wonders on relaxing the veteran’s muscles.

“Love is,” John began. Then he stopped. Sherlock frowned. “Love is,” he said again, “complex.”

“All emotions are complex, John,” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Give me a moment,” John snarked at him. “I’m getting there.” He took a deep breath, looking at his hands, then back up at Sherlock. “Love is a sort of presence in your body. It’s a pang, when you notice it, that jabs through your abdomen.”

John was no longer focusing on Sherlock. His mind had drifted to his memories, Sherlock noted. He leaned forward, trying to make sense of John’s words.

“Love encompasses your every action, when it is uncertain then it’s like a constant itch you can’t get rid of. When it’s reciprocated, it’s warmth that finds even the darkest parts of your soul. When it’s lost, it’s as if the rug was pulled from under you and your out at sea with no hope of getting back to land. I’ve seen people die from that, lose their will to keep going and just drown in the depth of their emotions. I’ve seen people kill for it to, and I’ve seen them live for it.”

John was focusing again, and this time he was looking straight at Sherlock. “There is love for your family, an obligation that comes from a shared history, one that you can’t undo and that, usually, you don’t want to. Then there’s love for your friends, the kind that hits you only when they’re not there or the kind that you appreciate when they are. But, above those, there’s the love for your lover, whether they are or not. That’s the love that makes people commit murder, that’s the love that breaks and saves a life.”

Something was nagging in the back of Sherlock’s brain. A memory. White hospital rooms, a voice calling.

John stood suddenly and Sherlock blinked up at him. “I’m going out.”

Sherlock stared after him, confused by the turn of events. Before he had in his mind to ask what was bothering him, John was already out the door.

In the next several weeks, Sherlock tried to make sense of what John had told him. But he couldn’t understand it. He didn’t love his brother, or at least he didn’t think he did. He may have at one point loved Mummy, but she was gone now and he barely remembered the feeling of that time.

He didn’t have any friends. Just John, but did he love John? He didn’t think so. Did John love him? Others thought he did, thought they were dating. But they weren’t.

John liked woman, he enjoyed them often enough. Never at their flat, but that hardly mattered. Sherlock considered himself asexual as it were, and a sociopath on top of that. Hardly a person to love.

But what would it feel like, to love someone? Sherlock couldn’t get that out of his mind. He wanted to know, he wanted to know like he hadn’t wanted to know anything before. It distracted him at home and work, and that was no good.

So he began an experiment. He searched for the best candidate, but only one really came to mind. He didn’t many choices, his brother was out, his Mummy was dead, and Detective Lestrade was married.

So, John it had to be.

Which brought him back to the present. He was successful; he’d fallen in love with his flatmate. He’d taught himself to appreciate the man’s actions, his caring nature, his love of danger, even his short and stocky appearance, scars included.

He didn’t get, at first, what the hype was about.

Then John spent a night at Sarah’s and he suddenly understood.

When John came home the next morning, Sherlock was locked in his room, curled in a ball and ignoring the world.

Trying to ignore the pain in his chest.

Failing to ignore it.

Failing to quantify it as anything but what it was.

He was in love.

And he hated it.

But he wasn’t done observing his own reactions, so he didn’t do anything about it. Not then.

Not until that case.

When John was held at gunpoint in front of him and he couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

And John was looking at him, waiting for him to save the day like he always did. Except it wasn’t Sherlock that came to the rescue this time.

Sherlock didn’t speak for three days after that. He ignored John, ignored any texts and calls and knocks on his door.

He decided then that he didn’t want to be in love anymore. The experiment was over, he’d learned enough.

But the blasted feeling just wouldn’t go away. He tried, oh how he tried.

Then John would hand him his morning mug of tea and it would all be shot to hell.

The next case they had involved a witness whose lover it was that lay in a pool of blood. Where all the investigators expected Sherlock to disregard the woman’s tears, to question her coolly as he would have always, well they were shocked to see him lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. Shocked to see him care.

Because he finally understood what it felt like. Because he looked at the body and imagined if it were John and he couldn’t fight the sudden dread the image filled in him.

But when John questioned him about it later, when they were both back in their flat, well Sherlock knew he couldn’t share these findings with his flatmate. With his friend. With the unknowing source of his affection.

“It’s nothing,” he said instead.

The pang of love that wasn’t returned, Sherlock thought to himself as John spent another night away.

He supposed it was his own fault for falling in the first place. And falling again, and again, and again every time the man, that stupid and wonderful and handsome and amazing and above all heterosexual man spared him even one glance.

Yes, Sherlock acknowledged to himself, it really was a disgusting habit.


End file.
